What Do You Do When You Reach Your Limit?

Everyone has a limit.

What do you do when you reach yours?

Here's the thing...

That is the wrong question.

The real question you need to ask is...

What limit are we talking about?

See...

Understanding how to act or react when we reach our limits...

Should be context-specific.

But not everyone thinks about it like that.

Most people have a go-to solution when they reach their limits.

Usually it is either...

Back down...

Fight or push harder...

Or drop into a specific mental or emotional state, such as rage or resignation.

And...

Sometimes these reactions make a lot of sense...

Yet other times...

They are not helpful or beneficial...

Depending on the context.

For instance...

I was waiting at a store recently with my wonderful spouse.

She wanted a custom piece for herself and to get as a gift.

It was a really nice gesture, and she deserves to be treated well.

The store, however...

Was atrocious with how long everything took.

There was a line to get in...

Then you had to wait to get a seat...

Then you had to wait for someone to come over to help you with whatever you wanted to get.

That whole process was around 2 hours before we got help with what we needed...

With only about 10 people in line ahead of us...

And at least 5 employees working with customers.

While waiting...

I definitely hit a limit.

But we were not there for me; we were there for my spouse.

So I sucked it up...

We waited...

And she ended up getting the piece she wanted, and she was extremely happy with it.

But...

There was a mother and daughter also at the store...

Where the daughter really wanted something...

And the mom threw a gigantic fit...

Yelling in the store...

Yelling outside of the store...

And clearly embarrassing the daughter.

What happened at the end of all of it?

They still waited, and eventually the daughter got what she wanted.

But did the mother's reaction do anything beneficial?

No.

It didn't help the relationship with the daughter.

It didn't help make things go any faster.

It accomplished nothing.

In that context...

Getting angry like that did not help anyone.

Are there times when being angry and verbal about it can be beneficial?

Absolutely.

That was not one of those times.

How we approach our limits and what we do when we reach them is important to understand...

But to do this successfully, we also need to deeply understand ourselves and the situations we are in.

There was another time when I was running a long race...

And I got to a point where something was not right.

Now, my normal reaction to reaching my limits during a race is to push through to the end...

Worry about the recovery later.

But I have done a lot of races over the years...

Starting in middle school track...

Going into high school cross country...

And moving into obstacle course races as an adult.

This did not feel the same.

So I really questioned myself in that moment...

Do I push through like I normally do...

Often fueled by my own desire to push myself and be competitive...

Or...

Did I need to do something different?

That race...

I hit that limit...

And made a different call...

Which I am glad I did because I discovered I was in the midst of Heat Exhaustion...

And if I had continued to push in that specific situation, I could have moved into Heat Stroke.

In that situation...

Pushing through was not the right call after reaching that limit...

Even if in most races the right call is to just keep going until the end.

The context matters...

And in that context, some symptoms were occurring that were abnormal...

Indicating I needed a different approach.

Everyone has limits.

It is important to understand what your limits are...

And how you tend to react.

What most people do...

Is reach their limits without having a conscious clue that they are there...

Then they hit a "snapping point"...

Which really is just a different way to say that they allow their subconscious habits to take over what they do and react.

The problem...

Is that when you do this, you lose control of considering the context...

Meaning that for most people...

They act poorly.

Instead...

You need to understand what the signs are that you are reaching your limits...

And when you begin to see that you are close...

You need to pay attention to the context more closely...

Before you "snap" into a subconscious habitual reaction.

You can control the way you move forward...

If...

You are aware that you are approaching that point first.

This allows you to question what limit you are reaching...

And understand what the context is so that you navigate through it all in a more beneficial way.

Now...

It is a limit...

So you may still struggle to reach any "ideal" at that point...

You may need to give yourself a bit of grace in terms of what you can do at your limit...

But at the very least, you can move in a general direction that is more beneficial than a different direction.

Understand what your limits feel like in different situations.

For me...

When it comes to anger, I feel my jaw tighten.

When it is mental, I begin to feel dazed and confused.

When it is physical, I become more irritated with things around me.

When it is emotional, I tend to want to disengage completely.

Every context has a different point where you begin to feel yourself reaching that limit...

And as you feel yourself dropping toward those points...

You can begin to consider what is occurring that both is causing you to reach that limit...

As well as factors for how best to approach and handle those limits.

Always seek first to understand what limit you are at...

Then the context...

Then figure out the best path given that context.

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